Topic
Bed trick
About: Bed trick is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 14 publications have been published within this topic receiving 76 citations.
Papers
TL;DR: In the play All's Well as mentioned in this paper, Shakespeare made the King's healer a woman and the bed-trick, an explicitly sexual event in which a disprized wife wins back her husband by making love to him incognito, taking the place of another woman, in some versions the wife herself in disguise.
Abstract: T HE STARTING POINT FOR THIS ESSAY IS SUSAN SNYDER S recent characterization of All's Well as a "deconstructed fairy tale": ' lurking beneath the folkloric narrative of the poor physician's daughter who deploys magic and cunning in order to overcome a dashing count's disdainful resistance are the unrepresentable specters of female sexual desire and male sexual dread. Indeed, the play invests the fairy-tale motifs that W. W. Lawrence believes undergird All's Well-"The Healing of the King" and "The Fulfillment of the Tasks"-with potent erotic subtexts.2 In adapting "The Healing of the King," Shakespeare, like his model Boccaccio, departs from tradition in making the King's healer a woman. Lawrence barely mentions this innovation, but it seems to me highly significant, especially since Shakespeare, unlike Boccaccio, makes Helena's gender-more particularly her sexual ardor and allure-indispensable to the cure. Integral to the narrative of "The Fulfillment of the Tasks" is the bed-trick, an explicitly sexual event in which a disprized wife wins back her husband by making love to him incognito, taking the place of another woman, in some versions the wife herself in disguise, whom he has wooed. All's Well deconstructs this folkloric device by wedding it to genuine sexual perturbation. The bed-trick is not simply the consummation of a marriage, in which Helena cleverly satisfies Bertram's seemingly impossible conditions,
31 citations
1 Nov 1975
TL;DR: In this paper, the Duke suggested that Mariana, whose contract with Angelo had not been solemnized, should secretly take the place of Isabel in Angelo's bed. Isabel welcomed this suggestion.
Abstract: Helena won Bertram by a trick; in response he submitted formally to the contract, told his bride how he despised her and fled, preferring the grim visage of war to Helena’s fair face; she pursued him and, by another trick, won him once more, and at last acquainted him with the felicity he seemed unable to perceive for himself. Claudio got Juliet with child before their marriage contract had been solemnized, and so became liable to the biting laws of Vienna. Isabel conceded the viciousness of his act but interceded on his behalf to Angelo. Angelo in return made Isabel an offer: ' Submit to my lust and your brother lives.' The Duke suggested that Mariana, whose contract with Angelo had not been solemnized, should secretly take the place of Isabel in Angelo's bed. Isabel welcomed this suggestion. And so the knot of the comedy is untied. Both of these stories, told thus in the barest language, are already tense and uncomfortable, before we endow the agents with any richness of character or psychological depth. I therefore reject the view that all our disgust in watching or reading these plays arises from an illicit, post-romantic urge to psychologize the agents. At the same time, it is equally clear that if we do allow the agents any richness of personality, the disgust becomes more acute.
21 citations
1 Jul 2009
TL;DR: The resemblance between certain character traits and details of the life of Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, and aspects of Shakespeare's portrayal of Bertram in All's Well That Ends Well is more intriguing than commentators noting this resemblance have shown as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The resemblance between certain character traits and details of the life of Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, and aspects of Shakespeare's portrayal of Bertram in All's Well That Ends Well is more intriguing than commentators noting this resemblance have shown. By darkening Bertram's traits in comparison to those of his counterpart, Beltramo, in the play's source in a tale in Boccaccio's Decameron, Shakespeare darkened the similar character of Southampton. Certain passages in Shakespeare's Sonnets and in plays such as King Lear, Macbeth, and The Winter's Tale illuminate this hypothesized negative perspective on the Earl. Tracing these references constructs a speculative psychosexual biography of Shakespeare, in which Southampton plays a role that complicates interpretation not only of Bertram's character but also of the notorious bed trick of All's Well with its implications of spiritual — if not literal — adultery. The unique representation of the bed trick in this dark comedy ma...
4 citations
TL;DR: After a century of misunderstanding and controversy over the "meaning" of Measure for Measure, scholars have, within the last twenty or thirty years, come to some measure of agreement as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: After a century of misunderstanding and of controversy over the "meaning" of Measure for Measure, scholars have, within the last twenty or thirty years, come to some measure of agreement. Following a series of excellent studies such as those by W. W. Lawrence, R. W. Chambers, and W. M. T. Dodds,' most critics now agree that the play is, besides being a comedy, a study of the relative merits of Greek justice and Christian mercy and that it is mercy which is shown to be the more " heavenly." Measure for Measure is generally conceded to be a "problem " comedy because Shakespeare tried to combine romantic conventions with a serious problem in political philosophy. There are still a few unsolved problems, however, the most important being concerned with character interpretation. Fortunately, the virtuous Isabella has finally been exonerated from the charge of prudishness. But the Duke and Angelo still pose problems. The Duke, I think, must be regarded from two points of view: personally, he represents the virtue of temperance; and politically, his function is to demonstrate the validity of the Christian doctrine that mercy is greater than retributive justice. Much of the dissatisfaction with him stems from the fact that he was chosen to initiate the two romantic conventions which Shakespeare added to his source material: the bed trick and the Duke's game of cat and mouse with Angelo, Isabella, and Lucio. He has
3 citations
TL;DR: The Bed-Trick CONVENTION employed by Shakespeare to resolve the plots of both All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure is morally abhorrent to many modem critics, but it has respectable antecedents in religious and royal genealogies as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: A LTHOUGH THE BED-TRICK CONVENTION employed by Shakespeare to resolve the plots of both All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure is morally abhorrent to many modem critics, it has respectable antecedents in religious and royal genealogies.' Indeed, it is a basic device in the cultural tradition of Western civilization to provide for the conception of a divine child who must be born into the world of man.
2 citations
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Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
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| 2018 | 1 |
| 2017 | 3 |
| 2012 | 1 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2003 | 1 |